Lander dropped onto asteroid

Hayabusa2 dropped its third and final lander onto asteroid Ryugu on 3 October. The MASCOT probe, created by Germany’s space agency, explored the surface for over 17 hours. It was controlled directly from Earth throughout, the first time a lander has been operated in this way.

It took MASCOT six minutes to reach the surface, where it bounced eight times before coming to rest. It then used a robot arm to manoeuvre itself into the best position to conduct its experiments. The lander spent two asteroid days and nights observing its landing location, then used its arm to ‘hop’ to another area and continued taking measurements until its battery ran down. The images revealed a surface strewn with boulders, but without the fine material scientists were expecting to see. “MASCOT has delivered exactly what we expected: an ‘extension’ of the space probe on the surface of Ryugu and direct measurements on site,” says Tra-Mi Ho, the MASCOT project leader. www.dlr.de

The MASCOT team was surprised that the surface of Ryugu isn’t covered in fine material as expected